


Bats in the Belfrey

by Librasmile (Tenthsun)



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Analysis, Character Analysis, Essays, Meta, Other, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:53:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29013873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenthsun/pseuds/Librasmile
Summary: Batman loves a good mystery, yet he's the biggest mystery of all. Some unanswered questions about some unexamined (by me anyway) corners of the Bats' life.





	Bats in the Belfrey

**Author's Note:**

> _**Note to the hardcore comic book brigade:** _ _These questions are going to mostly focus on the Nolan-Bale movies so don’t come for my head if I’ve missed some arcane point of Batman lore; I’m not going quite that deep._

Okay, I’m apparently that rare creature - a GIRL who read comic books growing up. But although I regularly read Superman, Aquaman (he had readers!), Wonder Woman, X-Men, Spiderwoman, Spider-Man, etc., I was never a regular Batman reader. Recently, however, thanks to a new HBO Max subscription, I’ve been devouring all of the DC animated movies as well as keeping the Chris Nolan-Christian Bale Batman trilogy on repeat. And as a result, I’ve started wondering a few things. 

Things that never made sense about Batman

  1. **What RICH couple is downtown on foot at night and somehow manages to wind up walking through an alley?** How DUMB can you be? Seriously? This point actually bothered me from the first time I saw the movie but I never gave it much thought. Now I’m wondering. Why would a couple in a tux, fur coat and pearls get on a raggedy, rat-infested train with their kid (also in a tux) to go to the opera? And then leave the opera early by going out a side door into an alley rather than exit through the lobby and hail a cab? Am I missing something? Is there some rule you can’t leave through the lobby doors while the sopranos are singing? I know at a Broadway play they won’t let you IN while folks are on stage. But leaving? That’s allowed right?   
  
But back to basics. It never occurred to the Waynes to call a cab or rent a limo for the evening. It’s safer; the driver can follow them as they walk down the sidewalk to perhaps find a nice restaurant to dine in. Or they can hop in and go sightseeing. It’s more comfortable; if it’s cold enough to wear a fur, it’s cold enough to make your kid wear a coat or to just keep him out of the weather all together by driving. No one thought of that? Something ain’t kosher there. The movie Waynes might have been naive, well-dressed hippie types but they weren’t stupid. Something is not adding up...
  2. **How did such naive do-gooders spawn a hard-core character like Bruce? Why are his parents such a blank slate - especially his mother?** I refuse to believe it’s just the PTSD. If Bruce were like the way the movie portrayed his parents, he wouldn’t have run and trained to become a ninja assassin. He would have wandered off and joined an ashram so he could spend his days sending good vibrations into the world - or hiding from it. Instead he’s jumping off of buildings and beating the hell out of criminals. So how the hell did these hippies spawn this hellion? Well there could be a way...  
  
His father was a doctor. REALLY? Okay the only way that works for me is if the man was a SURGEON. THAT makes sense. That’s a kind of violence - the cutting of skin and flesh - albeit violence for a good cause. Plus, surgeons often have serious egos. They think the sun shines out of their asses. Well the surgeon stereotype does anyway. And I can’t see the mild mannered portrayal of Thomas Wayne creating a personality - or is it a psychosis? - as hardcore as Batman’s without some evidence of capacity for violence somewhere. Bruce was born in the wrong era. He might have been better off just going to ‘Nam. At least then he’d have a legitimate reason for his paranoia and hair trigger reflexes. I can buy a personality like Bruce’s coming from such a Mr. Rogers’ type like Thomas Wayne if, during the day, he’s slicing and dicing into people’s guts - all for a good cause of course. However, that still leaves the question... 
  3. **Why is his mother such a blank slate?** I mean, who the hell was SHE? And why did neither of his parents have any relatives who could take over or whom they trusted to take over? Again something ain’t clean in the buttermilk. We have these mysterious parents we know next to nothing about. Add in rich folks _walking_ in a city, at night, down an alley. That makes NO sense. If Bruce hadn’t been there I would have assumed they were making a drug buy or going to some sort of taboo night club or social gathering. A sort of Eyes Wide Shut thing but in the city. It might make more sense if his mother was some kind of witchy-poo from Salem, Massachusetts. Or some kind of player in a Ichabod Crane/Headless Horseman/Sleepy Hollow nightmare. She could be from New York. I don’t doubt she was probably one of the Mayflower crew or possibly a descendent of the original Dutch who first inhabited New York (or New Amsterdam as it was then called). Perhaps there was a bit of eccentricity on her side and bit of of a history of obsessive characters on his father’s side. 
  4. **NO other relatives - at ALL?** And they left their kid in the custody of their butler? Now it’s been popular to reconceptualize Alfred as this James Bond type. But if we go with that we then need to ask WHY did they hire someone like that? Why wasn’t he with them when they went into that alley? And why did they feel better leaving Bruce with him than with a family friend or even Lucius Fox? His parents are not adding up y’all. Those folks are shady...And THAT makes more sense when you realize they produced a kid that turned into Batman.
  5. **Where the hell are the rest of the servants?** No way in hell Alfred can handle that whole house all by himself while also moonlighting as Batman’s mission control. Even if they close off most of the rooms you still have to do regular maintenance otherwise that mausoleum will go to rack and ruin in a few years.
  6. **How does Batman keep producing all those wonderful toys - the chemical weapons, the ordnance, the VEHICLES (car, plane, copter, catamaran) without bankrupting Wayne Industries?** Without anyone in requisitions finding out? Without one single purchase order going to the wrong department?
  7. **How does no one ever trace these toys back to Wayne Industries?** You mean to tell me not one police detective, not one investigative reporter tried to do that? No one tried to make their bones sussing out the Batman?
  8. **Is the man hopped on steroids or what?** Because there’s no way in hell that he’s that strong, fast, and reactive just because he had a few years here and there with Ras ‘al Ghul or studying martial arts or whatever. Come on. The human body can only go so far. And I’m not buying that peak performance thing. I’m sorry not even PX 180 can get you that jacked.
  9. **A Bat? ...seriously, though, a BAT?!** So there’s nothing spooky or downright occult about his obsession with bats? Because I mean they still haven’t come up with a plausible reason for running around as a grown ass man dressed as a bat. Unless he’s got some kind of hidden fetsih for fangs and blood, I’m not getting it. Oh I go along with it as long as I don’t think about it too hard. But when you try to apply some kind of logic to it, it all falls apart… Unless maybe he was born on Halloween and he thinks that means something. Maybe he feels like his life is one long trick or treat and now as an adult he wants to turn the tables. THAT makes more sense...
  10. **So NOBODY thought to get this guy some heavy duty therapy and/or meds when he was a kid?** I mean all of this drama could have been avoided with the right medical care and a change of location. Unless of course he has a personality disorder - which isn’t unlikely. And in that case all bets are off. But there’s still the option of moving. Because you can’t tell me the Waynes didn’t own other properties in other cities and other countries. He could have had a nice long “rest” in an Alpine sanatorium somewhere and passed it off as a stay at a Swiss boarding school. But noo-ooo-ooo, they’d rather let him stew in his juices and get crazier and crazier... _How’re the voices today, Bats? Angry? Funny? Sad? Well you better get on that and start soothing them. You know what happened the last time…_ (The Joker might have been on to something)



**Author's Note:**

> _This isn't perfect. I don't intend it to be. I wrote it for fun. Hope you enjoyed it too! Ta!_


End file.
